ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the significance of the motif of the hybrid child in two Young Adult series, Malorie Blackman's critically acclaimed Noughts and Crosses books and Stephenie Meyer's bestselling Twilight tetralogy. Both series are generic hybrids themselves, mixing romance and dystopia for Noughts and Crosses, and romance and fantasy for Twilight. They share many similarities in their treatment of relationships, featuring an irresistible love story between two members of different classes, races, or "species", whose liaison is hindered by socio-political and/or physical imbalance in power. Both couples accidentally conceive a child in one first sexual encounter. It argues that trans-racial romance and hybridity in these two examples of highly popular, arguably female-oriented Young Adult sagas are connected to issues of political and social awareness. In the dystopian or unsatisfactory societies presented, trans-racial parenting is an opportunity for counter-power; the hybrid child becomes a form of political upheaval against coercive social configurations.
